The pale lavender color should have clashed with her hair, and it did, but her creamy skin was so fair that the overall effect was somehow more dramatic than actually displeasing. It was, in fact, so startlingly effective that it took him a moment to realize that she'd not deliberately selected Helene's peignoir out of some defiant desire to flaunt custom or annoy him, but because she didn't have anything else to wear. He had forgotten that her trunks had sailed with her ship, but if that ugly brown cloak she'd been wearing was indicative of her preference in clothing, he preferred to see her in Helene's peignoir. The servants wouldn't share his liberal view, of course, and he made a mental note to remedy her apparel problem first thing in the morning. For now, there was nothing he could do except be grateful that the peignoir actually covered enough of her to verge on decency.

Biting back an admiring smile, he watched her struggle to maintain her frosty facade in the face of his silent scrutiny, and he marvelled that she could convey so many things without moving or speaking. She was innocence on the brink of womanhood, outrageous daring untempered by wisdom or hampered by caution. A vision of that gleaming hair of hers spilling over his chest flashed through his mind, and Stephen abruptly shook it off just as she broke the silence: "Have you finished staring at me?"

"I was admiring you, actually."

Sheridan had come downstairs fully prepared for a confrontation, longing for it, in fact, and she'd already suffered one setback when he looked at her with that peculiarly flattering expression in his bold blue eyes; his smiling compliment was the second. Reminding herself that he was a coldhearted, dictatorial beast whom she was not going to marry, no matter how he looked at her or how sweetly he spoke, she said, "I presume you had some reason for summoning me into your august presence, your worship?"

To her surprise he didn't rise to her barbs. In fact, he looked rather amused as he said with a slight bow, "As a matter of fact, I had several reasons."

"And they are?" she inquired stonily.

"First of all," Stephen said, "I wanted to apologize."

"Really?" she said with a shrug. "For what?"

Stephen lost the battle to suppress his smile. She had spirit, you had to give her that. A great deal of spirit… and a great deal of pride. He couldn't think of a man, let alone a woman, who'd dare to face him down and verbally bait him as she was doing. "For the abrupt way I ended our conversation the other night, and for not coming up to see you since then."

"I accept your apology. Now, may I go upstairs?"

"No," Stephen said, suddenly wishing she had a little less courage. "I need… no, want… to explain why I did that."

She gave him a scornful look. "I'd like to see you try."

Courage was an admirable trait in a man. In a woman, he decided, it was a pain in the ass. "I am trying," he warned.

Now that he'd lost a little of his composure, Sheridan felt much better. "Go ahead," she invited. "I'm listening."

"Will you sit down?"

"I might. It all depends upon what you have to say."

His brows snapped together and his eyes narrowed, she noticed, but his voice was carefully controlled as he began his explanation. "The other night, you seemed to be aware that I… that things between us weren't… all that you'd expect from a fiance."

Sheridan acknowledged the truth of that with a slight, regal inclination of her head that indicated nothing more than mild interest.

"There's an explanation for that," Stephen said, disconcerted by her demeanor. He gave her the only reason he'd been able to invent that seemed logical and acceptable. "The last time we were together, we quarrelled. I didn't think about our quarrel while you were ill, but when you began to recover the other night, I found it was still on my mind. That is why I may have seemed…"

"Cold and uncaring?" she provided, but with more puzzlement and hurt than real anger in her voice.

"Exactly," Stephen agreed. She sat down then, and he breathed an inner sigh of relief that the skirmish and lies were over, but his relief was short-lived.

"What did we quarrel about?"

He should have known that a defiant American redhead with an unpredictable disposition and no regard for noble titles or respect for dress codes would insist on prolonging a disagreement, instead of accepting his apology and politely letting the matter drop. "We quarrelled about your disposition," Stephen countered smoothly.

Puzzled gray eyes gazed straight into his. "My disposition? What was wrong with it?"

"I found it… quarrelsome."

"I see."

Stephen could almost hear her wondering if he was so small-minded that he'd continue to harbor a grudge over a quarrel when she'd been so sick. She looked down at her hands folded neatly in her lap, as if she suddenly couldn't face him, and asked in a disappointed, hesitant tone, "Am I a shrew, then?"

Stephen gazed at her bowed head and drooping shoulders, and he felt a resurgence of the peculiar tenderness she seemed to evoke in him at unexpected times. "I wouldn't say that exactly," he replied with a reluctant smile in his voice.

"I have noticed," she admitted meekly, "that my disposition has been a little-uncertain-these past few days."

Whitticomb had said he found her utterly delightful, and Stephen had the feeling that was a vast understatement. "That's completely understandable in these circumstances."

She lifted her head, her eyes searching his, as if she, too, were trying to reassess him. "Would you tell me exactly what we quarrelled about the last time we were together?"

Trapped, Stephen turned toward the drinks tray and reached for the crystal decanter of sherry, thinking quickly for an answer that would soothe and placate her. "I thought you paid too much notice to another man," he said on a stroke of inspiration. "I was jealous." Jealousy was an emotion that he'd never experienced in his life, but women were inevitably pleased when they could evoke it in a man. He glanced over his shoulder and was relieved to discover that in that one respect, Charise Lancaster was like all her sisters, because she looked amused and flattered. Hiding his smile, he poured sherry into a small crystal goblet. When he turned to hand it to her she was still looking at her hands. "Sherry?" he asked.

Sheridan's head snapped up, an inexplicable surge of delight in her heart. "Yes?"

He held the goblet toward her and she looked at him expectantly but not at the glass. "Would you like some wine?" Stephen clarified.

"No, thank you."

He put the glass on the table. "I thought you said yes."

She shook her head. "I thought you were talking to me and-Sherry!-" she exclaimed, surging to her feet, her face positively radiant. "I thought it was me. I mean, it is me. I mean, it must be what I was called, what-"

"I understand," Stephen said gently, experiencing a sense of relief that was nearly as strong as hers. They stood within arm's reach, smiling at each other, sharing a moment of triumph that seemed to bind them together and send their thoughts in similar directions. Stephen suddenly understood how Burleton could have been "madly in love" with her, as Hodgkin had claimed. As Sherry looked into his smiling blue eyes, she saw a warmth and charm that made her understand why she might have pledged herself to him. Odd phrases began to flit through the blankness of her memory, suggesting what ought to happen next…